


A Snake And Her Boy

by taispeantas_laethuil



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Crack Premise Taken Far Too Seriously, Familiars, Family, Gen, M/M, Mad Science for Love and Family, No Beasto, Sentient Animals, Slow Burn, Snakes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-27
Updated: 2016-01-27
Packaged: 2018-05-16 12:35:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5829181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taispeantas_laethuil/pseuds/taispeantas_laethuil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU where everything is the same but Dorian has a sentient snake friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Snake And Her Boy

The first year of her life was…confusing.

Before she emerge from her shell she felt each of her siblings grow cold and still, and felt the tiny shiver of fear: her first emotion. She didn’t want to be cold. She didn’t want to be dead. She threw herself at her shell, soft fangs unable to penetrate it. Eventually she managed to shift her egg to the ring of stones that encircled the nest and crack her shell against it.

“Mother!” That was the first word she’d heard. She remembered it, even if she barely understood it to be a word. It came from a heat source near the edge of her nest. “Mother, look!”

“Felix, what- _oh_.” A second heat source joined the first, and helped her free herself from the confines of her shell. “Oh, look at you, you lovely thing.” Even after her shell was gone, the second heat source, Mother, continued to stroke the back of her head. It wasn’t an unpleasant sensation.

“It’s got feathers!”

“It’s a chimera,” Mother explained. “That clutch was mostly cobra, but there’s also some Harish hawk, to promote bonding. And other things, but that’s the only one with feathers.”

Mother continued to stroke down her head as she spoke. It was still not unpleasant, but it was also not anything she really craved.

She wanted to eat, so she tilted her head back and opened her mouth.

“I think it’s hungry,” Felix said. “Should I get the eyedropper?”

“That might be wise for the first meal,” Mother said.

* * *

She did not like the eyedropper. She liked the dead bits of meat, bone, and fur Mother took to dropping into her nest better, but it wasn’t as satisfying as she wanted it to be, somehow, whether they were dropped directly into her mouth from overhead or left at the edge of the nest. She shed her skin, and her feathers along with it, and then shed her skin again, growing ever longer. She stayed in her nest, however: it was warm, and just beyond it there was a ring of frigid cold she was loathe to cross.

Things continued that way for perhaps a month. And then she met Dorian.

“Is this the success story?” he asked.

“That it is,” Mother said. “I was just about to feed it, if you’d like to watch, Dorian.”

“Certainly,” Dorian replied, and drew nearer to her nest.

Mother dropped the meat bits on one of the rocks. She uncoiled herself languidly, in no hurry to eat when her meal was going to stay put.

“Should they be dead?” Dorian asked.

“Should they not be?” Mother countered.

“Well. It is a snake. Aren’t they supposed to be hunting directly out of the egg?”

“It’s not only a snake. Maybe when it’s older I’ll build an enclosure where it can hunt live mice, but for now it shall have to content itself with dead ones.”

“There is a middle ground, you know.”

“Oh?”

Suddenly, the meat was moving. Scurrying. Dancing. Separating into three distinct lumps barely warmer than her nest. She hissed, and struck, clamping her jaw down on the closest lump and then swallowing it down. It stopped moving before she’d managed to swallow it, but the other two still moved, clumping together on the other side of the nest. She struck again, and missed, as the lumps scattered in opposite directions. Right or left? She wanted both, but the one to her left was closer. She rounded on it, hissing furiously with her hood flaring out in warning, and struck again, this time successfully.

“Well, it certain has a well-developed instinct for predation,” Dorian remarked. “I wonder…”

The third lump clambered over the rocks and immediately cooled, like everything else on the ring of ice of the other side of the rocks. Still, she’s not about to let the lump go now. She hovers over the lump, which thankfully isn’t moving any long, trying to figure out the best way to get it. Eventually she graps it lightly in her mouth and tosses it back into the nest. She drags it into the center, where it’s the warmest, and coils loosely around it as it heats up, just in case it starts to move again.

“Don’t worry lovely, I’m done tormenting you,” Dorian said. After a moment, she felt his fingers stroke down along her hood. “How smart is it supposed to be?”

“Very,” Mother told him. “The idea is that one of these might serve as a sort of bodyguard. Time will tell if I’ve managed to create something with the requisite intelligence and loyalty.”

* * *

The first member of the Inquisition she met (apart from Dorian, of course) was the Inquisitor herself. Though, she wasn’t yet the Inquisitor.

“Felicia,” he snapped. “We don’t spit at friends!”

Felicia ruffled her hood in irritation. The elf had been standing over him, covered in blood and wielding a knife, how was she supposed to know she didn’t mean them any harm.

“She understands you,” the elf said. Felicia turned to her and ruffled her hood again, more deliberately, so that she would be understood. “She understands me,” the elf continued. “She understands speech!”

Now that Felicia thought about it, she could recognize the elf’s voice. She’d been in the Chantry, along with the large heated _thing_ and the humans. She hadn’t been able to discern the elf’s scent over all the sickness and blood in the air.

“Full points for inductive reasoning, Herald,” Dorian said tiredly. He was no longer bleeding, and so pushed himself back up on his feet. “Felicia, this is the Herald of Andraste. Herald, this is Felicia.”

“Pleasure to meet you, Felicia,” the elf said, inclining her head slightly. “And most people call me Lavellan.”

Felicia returned the gesture, and then draped herself down over Dorian’s shoulders.

“You’re being remarkably sanguine about this,” Dorian remarked, one hand stroking down the back of her hood.

“I’m Dalish. I grew up surrounded by halla,” Lavellan said. “Believe me, sentient animals are the least weird part of all this.”

The walls were sick, like Felix was sick. Felicia could taste it on her tongue. She didn’t like it one bit.

“Well, I suppose time travel does trump all, in terms of weird,” Dorian said with a sigh.

Felicia hissed in agreement, nodding her head firmly.

“Do people normally react badly?” Lavellan asked.

“They can,” Dorian replied. “When people find out that she’s intelligent, they tend to assume that she’s the unnatural product of some kind of blood magic ritual, which naturally means that she must be killed rather than left in peace. Even without that, people in the South tend to take a much dimmer view of serpent than people in Tevinter do. Back home, serpents are a symbol of healing, rebirth and knowledge- not so here. It’s all secrecy and lurking danger and magic which is of course bad, which puts Felicia in an especially poor spot.”

Dorian had stopped stroking her, and was now merely resting the fingers of one hand on her head.

“Well, you have nothing to worry about from me,” Lavellan said, looking directly at her.

Felicia decided that she liked this elf.

Lavellan shifted her gaze back to Dorian. “But we need to get a move on.”

“Right,” Dorian said, gathering her back up and slipping her down the front of his robes. She settled in to the velvet pouch Dorian kept secure between his leather armor and his heart. “Let’s find out what we missed.”

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [prompt](http://dragonage-kink.livejournal.com/15866.html?thread=60911866#t60911866):  
> With all the cute fics about puppies and Bull's love for cute furry things, I'd like to see something where everyone, especially his boyfriend (Bull) are creeped out by Dorian's love of reptiles and (small) spiders (though Dorian does adore cats as well), even his bog Unicorn mount. "Snakes and dead things are not pets!"
> 
> Maybe snakes are popular pets in Tevinter, maybe they breed special ones like the Fereldans breed Mabari, snakes that are far smarter then regular ones, longer lived and much tougher, ones that can understand easy commands and even recognize their owners, even defend them. A combination of boa and viper coming in various sizes and colors, bred for companionship, beauty and protection (poison).
> 
> Maybe Dorian has a beloved pet snake he finds or took with him when he fled Tevinter, wearing it like living jewelry when he's not cooing and babying it, having a magically heated velvet bag for his 'Precious Lovely' to sleep and rest in. Bull is even more freaked out when he watches said snake do as commanded by Dorian a few times, though he's convinced said snake hates him since it doesn't listen to him and has actively hissed at him a few times."
> 
> Felicia's non-feathered, matured form looks a bit like a [ Samar cobra](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samar_cobra). "Harish hawk" is a riff off of [" Harris' hawk"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harris's_hawk), one of the few raptors known to hunt in packs. 
> 
> Also, man, it's weird to type "hawk" without an e on the end of it now.


End file.
